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The smell may have been better upwind, but it wasn't any prettier. We weren't sure what kind of whale it was. It didn't look like a gray whale, the most common off our coast. It looked the most like pictures we had seen of blue whales, and they do occasionally spot blue whales off the Orange County coast. We later learned from a lifeguard that it was a fin whale, which is closely related to, and often confused with, the blue whale. You can see the baleen plates in its mouth in this closeup, and the throat grooves or pleats on its underside, as it is upside down here. These pleats expand as the whale fills its mouth and throat with large quantities of water that it then strains out through its baleen plates, capturing the tiny krill or fish and discarding all that water. Reminds me a little of a pelican's pouch.